This some GFANZ pre-history. Rob gave a plenary talk at the 2016 New Zealand eResearch conference. In it, he described some of the serious issues one faces while trying to do advanced, collaborative science in New Zealand. When there are challenges, there are also opportunities for improvement. The concept business plan for GFANZ (written later in 2016 an archive is availabe here.) was an effort to show what a different and better system for doing genomics in Aotearoa could look like. Some of those ideas are here in this talk.